The art practice of Hu Xiangcheng addresses issues in multiple grounds. For the last decade he has been devoting most of his attention to a social cells restoration project. It is the artist’s social engagement by intervening structural change, also a form of day-trance through an insertion of ambiguity into the utilitarian fabrics of daily ethics. We shall soon have the opportunity to consider the works in the context of multidisciplinary contemporary art that deals with the refinement of fundamentals.

What emerges is a submerged intention for contemporary art to raise questions against various external fields. We shall not be bound to view the suspension of the rural construction project as the reason for the artist’s return to his studio, an artist’s studio could in fact be located on a farm or anywhere else.

From the artist’s standpoint, boundaries set out to differentiate art and society, are no more than speculative smokescreens. The artist dwells in and confronts only one truth, whereas a divided world is seen only with compound eyes.

If we take contemporary art’s examination of failures as an example, only an art that possesses no factors or thematic appearances of failure can perform discourses upon a failure as a result of invalidation. However, a failure of material and inspirational means is no definitive proof that the artist relies on a world dominated by a subverted philosophy of success.

Rather than to say that contemporary art is nurtured by social problems, it is also legitimate to consider that a shadow world in which philosophical thinking is stimulated solely from problems is in fact non-existent –– Although, such a world does swing into perpetual existence once the gallery institutions set the public gaze upon it.

Hu Xiangcheng has set premises for his work in enormous dimensions: namely he remains faithful to the public initiation of contemporary art, through criticizing the explorative directions within criticism itself he reveals the positive dimensionalities the notion of criticism should contain. Contemporary artists often process and refine social problems they discover, exemplifying it to become issues of critical concern. On one hand they expose the congested meridians of social predicament, while on the other, wreaking havoc upon the stale constellation of art.

It is apparent that the art theory transformed from ‘aesthetics of the rose’ to ‘aesthetics of the thorn’ will remain effective in the long term, as we have been numbed by the shock value of contemporary art, it is only our endurance which multiplied with time, expecting greater shock. Before the actual emergence of a new dominant theory, all speculations on the theory’s unknown contours are in vain. Despite the fact that certain individual practices were successful, they operate on the basis of seeking sympathetic interpretations within the context of using thorns against thorns.

Hu Xiangcheng’s moderate concept of humanity renders automatically a deviation rectifying biological clock for his creativity, which values the local ground. For example, his avoidance of saying “No” indicates more insistence than obedience. He tends to tolerate others’ understanding, but seldom his own.

In some of his works, Hu Xiangcheng collected carved pillars and ornamented rafters as well as furniture fragments of ancient architecture from the scrap market, whose fractures documented the unknown damage. That is to say, the artist destructs and restores those conscious social historical materials into collective unconscious matter in an act of recycling. Someof these collective unconscious matters are further ignited into a selective abandonment process through social historical measures.

The encounters of conventional matters trigger conjecture, which is prone towards placing the conjecturer into convenient categories. Hu Xiangcheng assembles these fragments into frameworks, with a few brush- strokes added here and there, such as birds. When traditional boundaries symbolizing the home such as doors are put on exile, the window and other dead- wood pieces also become a nesting place for birds.

To recount fables of past vitality, or to search for the beautiful traces on the ruins of aesthetics, are indeed melancholic endeavors – yet still within the scope of a positive romanticism.
Our being is after all a myth, while Hu Xiangcheng recounts such a myth on the possibilities of being. Contemporary artists are usually mortified to venture into this alleged extravagant myth. Realistic social objectives of contemporary art require contemporary artists to avoid the Romantic institution. However, they still fabricate the illusion of a wonderful world or a world that could be wonderful some day, juxtaposing the myth of reproduction on the one hand, with the myth of the sterilization of contemporary art on the other. Hu Xiangcheng’s courage to turn things upside down is to some extent indicative of his education. In his childhood, he was fascinated by the monkey show in the local marketplace. Later he enjoyed studying and teaching at the Shanghai Theatre Academy and was never convinced that the stage could be refuted.

The Romantic narrative confines its happenings to the spotlight, while the spotlight is set up by design, The magical New World–Africa, America, the countryside and villages inside cities all seem to be stages built for leading us astray in order to make a living. Hu Xiangcheng’s works expose an explicit stage - even if its characters are no human beings, or concerning human beings in the future or the present continuous tense, they are experiencing or have experienced them.